Red Room Where the Writers Are

Red Room is a community that already spans the globe, and one day we'll have members from every country sharing wonderful content in every language. Of course, we got our start in San Francisco, so it will surprise no one that we have a special place in our hearts for the magnificent literary community that makes the Bay Area and Northern California such a great place to be a reader, a writer, or someone who simply cares about the written word and the communication of great ideas.

That's why we're excited that the Northern California Book Awardshave come around again. Conceived by PoetryFlash,the journal that is "dedicated to providing the widest possible access to poetry and literature," the awards celebrate the best in Northern California fiction, poetry, nonfiction, children's literature, and special contributions to the creation of community through literature. This year, four Red Room authors are nominees for awards:

Kirsten Menger-Anderson's novel, Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, is nominated in the Fiction category, quite an accomplishment for a first novel! It takes place over several centuries, following a peculiar family of healers who use each era's science and pseudoscience to tend the sick.

Red Room author Mary Roach said this about Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain: ""If I had a talent for fiction, Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain is the book I'd dream of writing. Kirsten Menger Anderson's writing floors me. To read her luminous prose applied to the grotesqueries of the characters is an unforgettable literary experience."

Michelle Richmond's newest, No One You Know, is also nominated in the Fiction category. For her fourth novel, Michelle "gracefully weaves in fascinating background material on the coffee culture and the field of mathematics as she thoughtfully explores family dynamics, the ripple effects of tragedy, and the importance of the stories we tell." (Booklist)

Featuring a cameo from Red Room's own Ben Fong-Torres, No One You Know has been living up to the anticipation that built before its June 2008 release.

Journalist Frances Dinkelspiel has been getting a lot of attention for her debut, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California. Nominated in the General Nonfiction category, Frances's story "captures a pivotal moment in American history: the rise of California from a frontier economy driven by the barter of hides and the exchange of gold dust to an economic steam engine leading the nation."

You can also catch Frances, Peter Coyote, Will Durst, and other Bay Area originals in SFGate's new City Brightsfeature. Frances's first piece for this new section, about San Francisco's secret libraries,is a great place to get a first taste of her writing.

Yuyi Morales is the author of Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book, which is nominated in the Children's Literature category. The newest journey with Morales's delightful Señor Calavera is a "heart-warming original tale with folklore themes."

By the way, if you haven't watched Señor Calavera go through hilarious existential angst in this video, you're in for a treat.

The awards will be presented on Sunday, April 19th, 2009, in the Koret Auditorium at San Francisco's Main Library. The ceremony starts at 1:00 p.m., and there will be a book signing and reception immediately afterwards. Congratulations to all the nominees!